BLITZ: Wild, swinging win for Robert Lee, 70-60

Kimberley Parker/Standard-Times
Veribest High School's Zach Book undercuts Robert Lee's Will Howard as he goes up for a pass Friday in the second quarter.

ROBERT LEE — Will Howard straightened up.

Stumbling toward the end zone early in the fourth quarter of a three-point game, he was hit, nearly fell, put an arm down, straightened up and scored a key touchdown in Robert Lee's 70-60 win over Veribest.

"I thought I was going down," he said after the game. "I have no idea how it happened."

But perhaps even bigger for the Steers in their surprisingly close game against the Falcons, Howard responded to Coach Shay Avants' warning at halftime to straighten up his game. Held to 38 yards rushing in the first half, Howard exploded for nearly 120 the rest of the game.

"I wasn't very focused" in the first half, he said. "Coach talked to me, and he told me to straighten it up or I wasn't going to play anymore.

"I decided to straighten up."

Howard's performance punctuated a wild roller-coaster of a game in which the two teams combined for 130 points, 800 yards of offense (on an 80-yard field) and 17 touchdowns, and his fourth-quarter touchdown opened a 54-44 lead that proved too great for the Falcons to overcome.

That the game was so close — the lead changed seven times in the first three quarters, and both teams blew first-half leads of 10 points or more — was something of a victory for Veribest, whose hard-charging offense led by quarterback Cody Hurt proved difficult, if not impossible, for the Steers to contain.

"We have an offense that we think can compete with anybody," said Veribest head coach Grant Richmond. "We've been in shootouts all year long. We don't think anyone can stop us, but we need to be able to stop other people."

The teams traded touchdowns for the first four possessions of the game, but when the Falcons were forced to punt late in the first quarter, the Steers responded with their third score in three drives to open a 24-14 lead. After Veribest cut the lead to two, Robert Lee fumbled twice in four plays, one of them a kickoff return and both turnovers leading immediately to Falcon touchdowns and a 36-24 Veribest lead.

"Those two fumbles kept us in the game," Richmond said.

Veribest let the lead slip away but trailed by just two, 46-44, near the end of the third quarter, as they drove deep into Steer territory. But with first-and-goal from the Robert Lee eight, the Falcons failed to convert, as the previously sure-armed Hurt and his previously sure-handed receivers combined for three incompletions, turning the ball over on downs.

That set the stage for a 75-yard Steer drive, capped by Howard's acrobatic lunge for the end zone at the end of his 37-yard run. The potential 16-point swing proved to be the difference in the game, as the teams traded touchdowns for the rest of the contest, with Veribest running back Adolfo Lara providing a final flourish: returning a kickoff from his own goal line 80 yards for a touchdown with 13 seconds left in the game.

Lara had a fine night, running for 107 yards the more traditional way, and so did Robert Lee quarterback Justin Gartman, who led all rushers with 160 yards and threw for another 146. It was a night for good runners, but 37 of Howard's 155 yards overshadowed all of them.

"That was a real good piece of running there," Avants said. "They picked on him early. He didn't have a good start to the game, but he finished strong."